Telemarketing and the use of agents for telemarketing are well understood concepts. In the case of cold calls for sales, agents are typically given a written script of information to be read to a customer. Additional scripts may be provided for commonly asked questions.
In the case of inbound calls, agents are often given rudimentary training (e.g., product brochures) to familiarize the agent with products or services to be promoted. Where an agent finds himself/herself unable to answer a question, the agent simply transfers the caller to another agent.
To leverage the productivity of telemarketing agents, automatic call distributors (ACDs) are often used to route calls to agents. In the case of outgoing sales calls, a list of potential customers are transferred to the ACD. The ACD monitors the status of the agents (i.e., whether their telephones are active) and places calls upon detecting idle agents.
Upon placing a call, the ACD monitors the call connection for pick-up by the called party. Upon detecting the presence of the called party, the ACD may connect the call to an idle agent.
Once a customer has answered an outgoing call, the outgoing call may be handled similarly to an incoming call. The ACD may seek to discern a probable subject matter and purpose of the call (e.g., in the case of an outgoing call of a sales campaign, the sale of a particular product, in the case of an incoming call, the subject matter handled by the service or sales organization dialed, etc.).
If a number of agents are idle when the call is processed, then the ACD may use the discerned purpose of the call to select the most qualified agent to handle the call. Further, the ACD may notify an associated computer system of the purpose of the call and the computer system may present an appropriate script on a terminal of the agent regarding handling of the call.
While ACDs are very effective in automating the process of telemarketing, ACDs are a victim of their own programming complexity. Because of the vast number of call types and call handling procedures possible, it is difficult to evaluate the performance of any one agent. To overcome this difficulty, call center supervisors are often forced to directly monitor agent calls to form an opinion on performance. Accordingly, a need exists for a method of evaluating the performance of telemarketing agents, which does not depend upon direct monitoring.